Archive: October 2007
Old Age Has a Limited Future
Aubrey de Grey argues that some people alive today will live in a robust and youthful fashion for 1,000 years. "Aging is responsible for two-thirds of all death -- now that means worldwide 100,000 people every single day -- and in the industrialized world, it is something like 90 percent."...
By Patricia Sullivan | October 31, 2007; 5:54 PM ET | Comments (0)
Funeral Directors on the Air
Anyone see the Frontline show on funerals? I missed it, but (thanks PBS!) will try to watch it online. I see those smart people at Washingtonpost.com had a live chat with the producers, too. Related: I've also become an erratic fan of the quirky new TV show "Pushing Daisies" which...
By Patricia Sullivan | October 31, 2007; 3:36 PM ET | Comments (0)
News Obits and Funeral Services
Should news obituaries contain information about memorial and funeral services? At The Washington Post, the answer is no. Our long-standing policy says since we're writing about a person's life on the occasion of their death, service information doesn't belong in the article. But from time to time, readers question that...
By Patricia Sullivan | October 30, 2007; 4:41 PM ET | Comments (0)
Clusters Continued
It used to be that one of the "perks" of the low-paying journalism game was that you were pretty sure of getting an obit in your own paper when you died. That promise went away when the numbers of reporters and editors boomed in the 1970s and 1980s. And although...
By Patricia Sullivan | October 28, 2007; 11:58 AM ET | Comments (0)
Shades of Gray
I've just completed a relatively short obituary of an administrative law judge named John Gray. (It should be in the paper on Thursday, Oct. 25.) He had a fairly high-powered, if not exactly colorful, Washington career -- law school grad who spent 12 years as an FBI agent, then 15...
By Matt Schudel | October 24, 2007; 3:25 PM ET | Comments (0)
Breaking Deaths
We're a little busy today with the deaths of actress Deborah Kerr, Admiral William Crowe and talk-show host Joey Bishop. And of course, our many, many local obits. Luckily, two of the three big ones were written in advance -- Adam wrote the Kerr article several years ago, Pat wrote...
By Patricia Sullivan | October 18, 2007; 4:24 PM ET | Comments (5)
Corrections
On the theory that a good correction is sometimes worth the price of a newspaper, here's this recent gem from LA Times: An obituary on Doolittle Raider Nolan A. Herndon in the Los Angeles Times gave his nickname as Sue. In fact, he was known only as Nolan Anderson Herndon....
By Adam Bernstein | October 18, 2007; 2:21 PM ET | Comments (0)
Clusters
"The Dead Beat," Marilyn Johnson's 2006 book about obit writers, notes a trend she called "occupational clusters." That is when two inventors or three war heroes or five actors die within a few days of one another and appear on the same obit page. The New York Times is particularly...
By Adam Bernstein | October 18, 2007; 2:13 PM ET | Comments (1)
The Good Doctor
Sometimes when I'm writing an obituary, I run across someone who is so admirable and so humanely decent that it's hard to believe. The moment I knew there was something extraordinary about Dr. W. Proctor Harvey was when I learned that he had his medical students listen to Beethoven. He...
By Matt Schudel | October 17, 2007; 12:06 PM ET | Comments (0)
Attending A Japanese Funeral
Considering the number of different cultures in the world, it makes sense that burial rites would vary. Here, a young Japanese who lives in the U.S. wrote about attending a Japanese funeral . Here's an interesting excerpt: I find this to be the most interesting, if not the most disturbing...
By Patricia Sullivan | October 15, 2007; 1:35 PM ET | Comments (3)
Quote of the Day
From a Detroit Free Press columnist: "Now, if only I could make sure that when my time comes they don't boil down my life's work to those four little words: "She loved to travel." Such a trite phrase....Specifics, that's what does the trick. " Couldn't have said it better myself....
By Patricia Sullivan | October 15, 2007; 11:19 AM ET | Comments (0)
A Horse Thief in Your Family Tree
People who browse obituaries are often into genealogy, too. It's interesting, but sometimes off-point, to say so-and-so was the great-great-great-granddaughter of the cobbler to John Hancock. My grandfather, who jokingly claimed to be part American Indian because of his skill as a fisherman, warned us not to look too far...
By Patricia Sullivan | October 10, 2007; 2:56 PM ET | Comments (0)
A "Red" Shipley Remembrance
Robert "Red Shipley, who died Oct. 6, was a fixture of the Washington area's airwaves for four decades. He spent the last 25 years emceeing WAMU-FM's "Stained Glass Bluegrass" Sunday program. Rob Bamberger, whose "Hot Jazz Saturday Night" radio show is always full of wry insight into terrific music, offered...
By Adam Bernstein | October 9, 2007; 11:36 AM ET | Comments (0)
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
The whole burial routine is going to go the way of the buggy whip one of these days, in my humble opinion. If you figure everything's connected, why not help it along with a green memorial?...
By Patricia Sullivan | October 9, 2007; 10:45 AM ET | Comments (0)
The Nearly Un-Dead
Anyone who is a fan of good writing knows the work of Henry Allen. He's a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and an editor now, but he writes too little, in his fans' opinions. Luckily, he has a piece today on the new wax museum that is sure to leave you laughing...
By Patricia Sullivan | October 5, 2007; 11:32 AM ET | Comments (0)
False Death, False Information
The first sentence is not exactly Garcia Marquez, but it's eye-catching nonetheless. As my colleague Matt Schudel pointed out, an Albany newspaper reports the premature burial of a local man in his college alumni newspaper. This reminded me of a terrific story the Wall Street Journal published several years ago...
By Adam Bernstein | October 4, 2007; 4:02 PM ET | Comments (0)
Greatly Exaggerated
While traveling abroad in 1867, Mark Twain heard rumors that some American newspapers had prematurely declared him dead and printed his obituary. Twain supposedly sent off a telegram with his famous comment, "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." (Actually, according to this Web site, which reproduces Twain's handwritten...
By Matt Schudel | October 4, 2007; 11:49 AM ET | Comments (0)
An Obituary of Another Kind
Most of us who work in Obits have a soft spot for nostalgia -- after all, more than most reporters, we deal with events from the past. And nothing melts a reporter's heart more than tales of the glorious, rambunctious days of old-time journalism, when newsrooms were noisy with the...
By Matt Schudel | October 3, 2007; 12:53 PM ET | Comments (0)
One Woman Ends Her Life
An unusual article this morning, from the Oregionian in Portland. Lovelle Svart, who had lung cancer for nearly five years, ended her life under the state's assisted suicide law. She wanted people to think about end-of-life issues so she and her former employer, the Oregonian, posted a video blog about...
By Patricia Sullivan | October 2, 2007; 11:18 AM ET | Comments (1)
